Adobe to Patch Flaws in Reader, Acrobat

Adobe announced on Thursday that it will release security updates next week to patch vulnerabilities in Acrobat and Reader products.

Security updates will be issued on Tuesday, March 8, for the Windows and Mac versions of Reader and Acrobat. The patches will address vulnerabilities that are critical and have a priority rating or “2,” which indicates that while the flaws are serious, they are currently not exploited in the wild and it’s unlikely that they will be abused by malicious actors in the near future.

According to Adobe’s prenotification advisory, the product versions affected by the security holes the company will resolve next week are Acrobat and Reader DC 15.010.20059 (Continuous), Acrobat and Reader DC 15.006.30119 (Classic), and Acrobat and Reader XI 11.0.14 and earlier versions (Desktop).

In January, Adobe released Acrobat and Reader updates to patch a total of 17 vulnerabilities, including use-after-free, double-free and other memory corruption vulnerabilities that can be exploited for arbitrary code execution.

Users should update their installations as soon as the patches become available. They should also keep in mind that Acrobat and Reader 10.x are no longer supported since November 2015.

Last year, Adobe released updates to patch a total of 460 vulnerabilities, including more than 100 in Acrobat and Reader, which the company fixed with three security updates issued in May, July and October.

Eduard Kovacs is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.